A. Fill 'er Up -- With Hydrogen
Narrator: : This is Science Today.
The next time you fill your tank, remember that
gasoline and diesel are not the only fuels out there.
Engineer Jim Heffel of the University of California,
Riverside led a team that created a truck that runs
on hydrogen. It's a conventional truck, only slightly
modified. Why hydrogen?
Heffel: It has a few benefits. One, that
the main exhaust product's water. And secondly,
it can be made from water, so it's a renewable fuel.
Narrator: : A non-polluting, renewable
resource vehicle that can be built with existing
technology? You'd think car companies would be rushing
to make them -- but they're not.
Heffel: The drawback is, there's no hydrogen
refueling stations. No one wants to build a hydrogen
refueling station until there's cars, and no one
wants to build cars until there's places to fill
them up.
Narrator: : One way around that
logjam is using hydrogen in fleet vehicles and buses.
Then when people get used to the idea, says Heffel,
consumers will start asking for their own hydrogenmobiles
-- especially as petroleum runs out and gasoline
prices rise. For Science Today, I'm Steve Tokar.
B. Hold That Molecule
Narrator: : Want to look at a
molecule? Mike Bailey has one you can hold in your
hand. This is Science Today. Bailey, a computer
imaging expert at the University of California,
San Diego, works with a device called a laminated
object manufacturing machine.
Bailey: Basically it builds up a 3-D object
from layers of paper. Each layer of paper is about
four thousandths of an inch thick, so about 250
layers of paper per inch. A laser is used at each
layer to cut out the cross section.
Narrator: : Scientists who want
to go beyond an image on a computer screen come
to Bailey for models of everything from planets
to machine parts.
Bailey: Probably some of our most interesting
and popular work we've done so far has been in the
area of molecular modeling. We've done a lot of
work building protein molecules.
Narrator: : By holding a model,
biochemists learn things about proteins that never
would have occurred to them looking at a screen.
Bailey: You can turn it around, you can run
your fingers through it, you can really get an idea
of the shape. And it's that kind of shape insight
that the molecular modeling people are after.
Narrator: : For Science Today,
I'm Steve Tokar.
C. Take Me In To the Ball Game
Narrator: : This is Science Today.
How do you play a traditional game of baseball in
a new domed stadium? That's the question that was
put to agricultural expert Steve Cockerham of the
University of California, Riverside.
Cockerham: The situation has come up where
more and more purists in sport are interested in
playing or seeing sports played on natural grass.
But there's also more interest in dome-type stadiums,
or at least enclosed stadiums. The question came
up when a baseball franchise was awarded to Phoenix,
and you can imagine that baseball in Phoenix in
the afternoon in August might be formidable task
just to sit through the game.
Narrator: : But Cockerham and his
fellow researchers have come up with a natural grass
that can tolerate the low amount of sunlight the
Phoenix playing field will be exposed to. The stadium
dome will stay open for several days at a time,
and then closed and air conditioned for the several
days of a home stand. The new grass is the first
that will tolerate that regimen and still meet the
standard for professional sports. For Science Today,
I'm Steve Tokar.
D. Growing Muscle to Study A
Growing Problem
Narrator: : This is Science Today.
Type II diabetes is a growing health problem. Dr.
Robert Henry of the University of California, San
Diego points out that unlike type I diabetics, who
need insulin shots to stay alive, type II's make
insulin. However...
Henry: These individuals with type II diabetes
don't respond normally to the insulin that they
have in their body. It's normal insulin but it just
doesn't work normally. And this insulin resistance
is primarily in their muscle -- the muscles that
move their body -- and in the liver.
Narrator: : Fortunately, Henry
has found that he can take muscle tissue from diabetics
and keep it alive in the laboratory for months at
a time.
Henry: And it continues to act just like
muscle from the diabetic patients. So essentially
what we have is we have muscle in the laboratory
that is diabetic. And this allows us to do some
very sophisticated studies on what may be causing
this insulin resistance.
Narrator: : If he can find the
cause, that will be a big step toward better treatment
-- and maybe a cure. For Science Today, I'm Steve
Tokar.
E. Adrenaline and Memory
Narrator: : This is Science Today.
Where were you the day that -- well, you fill in
the blank. When an important event happens, we remember
it more vividly than the events in our day-to-day
lives. Why? That's the question studied by neurobiologist
Larry Cahill of the University of California, Irvine.
Cahill: It makes sense that not all of our
memories are stored equally well. Things that are
more important to us, more emotionally arousing,
should be stored better on average than those that
are not.
Narrator: : Cahill and his fellow
researchers think they've discovered how that happens
inside the brain. One key is adrenaline.
Cahill: Well, we have a lot of evidence from
animal studies, and some recent very exciting evidence
from human studies, that indicates that in fact
your body's adrenaline system, which gets pumping
when you get emotional about something, actually
feeds back to your brain and helps you to remember
those emotional events better than you would non-emotional
events.
Narrator: : The other key to emotional
memory is an almond-shaped structure in the brain
called the amygdala that works together with adrenaline
to imprint memories. For Science Today, I'm Steve
Tokar.
